Line by Line

So, after years away from it (though I used to be not bad) I am teaching myself to sketch, draw, and ink images again. Inking’s new to me, so I decided to start with that. But of course, I figure,it’s a digital era, and Wacom tablets aren’t so expensive now… why not do it on my computer?

And no, I didn’t manufacture the image straight out of my head. Those who’ve seen the (excellent) SF film Europa Report (2013) may recognize the splash image:

(I myself watched Europa Report yesterday, and liked it a lot. They did amazing things with the budget they had.)

Still, my objective here was to learn to ink a penciled sketch, and as far as I’m concerned, this is not a bad start, even if it does feel like cheating. (Gotta start someplace.) “Inking” involved more decision-making than I’d imagined, since I was using black ink (and no color) and decided to just ramp up the shadow to pure blackness, for obvious reasons.

The actual pencil sketching–figuring out what style of drawing I want to develop–is a much bigger question to me, so I’ll come to that later. I’m not happy with the “grey” parts, and think the background is too “busy” in general, but overall, it’s not bad, for someone who’s not been drawing for decades now… and I’m pleased with how I got the facial expression to be slightly different, and more interesting to my eye, than the original.

Of course, I’d welcome (constructive!) comments/pointers/criticism from people who know more about drawing and sketching than I do!